The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

EDITORIALS

Security concerns in Delhi
Early alarm may help plug loopholes

The ease with which two motorcycle riders on Sunday opened fire outside Delhi’s Jama Masjid and made good their escape would no doubt add to the worry of the organisers of the Commonwealth Games. The incident exposed the weak links in the security blanket put in place and raised question marks over the supposedly fool-proof arrangements made in the national capital ahead of the Games. Indeed, had a poor rickshaw- puller not mustered enough courage to hurl a brick at the two miscreants, thus forcing them to scoot, the shooting would have left a much worse trail of blood. What is even more worrying is that the riders should target a tourist bus within shouting distance of a police station. Paradoxically, the Delhi Police has been gearing up over the past several months to cope with precisely this kind of an eventuality. But when desperate elements did choose to strike, the police actually failed the test. Their failure to stop the culprits from escaping from a crowded area is bound to raise questions about their preparedness. It is of no consolation that a police constable tried to run after the motorcycle riders. That neither the policeman nor anyone in the crowd was able to correctly note down the registration number of the two-wheeler, which might well have been fake though, indicates poor reaction, coordination and even poorer support from citizens.

Security personnel are undoubtedly doing a thankless job. But Sunday’s incident does underscore how vulnerable we still are to terror strikes. The Delhi Police has been exuding confidence in dealing with threats to the Commonwealth Games. Police spokesmen have also been quick to boast of the four-layered security, electronic surveillance, aerial reconnaissance, real-time communication, quick-reaction teams, patrolling by plainclothesmen, snipers, commandos, etc, that, they were certain, would help keep Delhi secure. People have repeatedly been reassured that unprecedented use of technology would keep miscreants at bay. But on Sunday it took just two motorcycle riders and arguably less than two minutes to call the bluff.

There is, clearly, no room for complacency. Threats to the Games are real and one must presume that terror groups would try their utmost to strike. The only effective deterrent is the ability of the security establishment to plug escape routes and catch the culprits. Sunday was an early alarm that tested the security for the Games. It would hopefully act as a catalyst for a higher degree of caution.

Grassroots wisdom
Villagers show more sagacity than leaders

At a time when the nation awaits with bated breath the outcome of the court verdict in the 60-year-long litigation into the Babri Masjid title suit, local communities of two Uttar Pradesh villages have shown that left to themselves, they can preserve communal harmony without any fuss. They deftly defused complicated situations which had the potential to cause a communal conflagration. As reported in this newspaper on Monday, residents of one village, Dhuswa Kala in Maharajganj district, showed statesmanship — which could be the envy of any politician — when labourers stumbled on a Shivlinga and an idol of Nandi while digging to restore an old tomb. The local community leaders met immediately and agreed to divide the land, half for the tomb and half for a temple. Not only that, they signed a written agreement so that there was no dispute on the issue in future also.

An equally heartening incident took place the same day at Katra village in Mainpuri district of western Uttar Pradesh. Two goats of a Muslim woman barged into an old door-less temple and damaged the idols there. We know that incidents even smaller than this have caused riots in the past. But before troublemakers could exploit the situation, the local Muslim community collected donations to install a new idol in the temple.

Every such instance of traditional brotherhood is a slap in the face of the politicians who are always out to fish in troubled waters. It is also a lesson that the common man is the least bothered about Mandir and Masjid matters. He is more concerned about eking out a living — the mundane “roti, kapda, makaan” stuff. Leaders who are supposed to provide good governance deflect attention from their failures by pitting one community against the other. Enough blood has been shed at their bidding. Now is the time to tell them once and for all that the common man is no longer willing to be the pawn in their unholy game.

Excesses of rain
Make growth environment-friendly

If deficient rain was a problem last year, an excess of it has played havoc in northern states this year. While the scale of devastation in Leh is unprecedented and people are still trying to come to terms with the harsh reality, incessant rain during the weekend caused the death of at least 60 people in Uttarakhand alone. The water level in many rivers flows above the danger mark. Dehradun has got the heaviest rainfall in 44 years. The supply of essential items of daily use to Nainital and other towns has been disrupted. Infrastructural failure in the hills as well as the plains, in villages as well as cities is self-evident.

The poor, as usual, are the worst sufferers. Many have not only lost the roof over their heads but also sources of income as the inclement weather disrupts normal life and development work. Only experts can tell us if these aberrations in weather are linked to global warming. Definitely, the shrinking green cover, haphazard development at the cost of the environment, indiscriminate felling of trees and frequent widening of roads to cope with increasing traffic in the hills contribute to the damage done by heavy rain.

The increased pressure of population, buildings and vehicles has rendered the fragile hills prone to disaster. Landslides and accidents are becoming common. Given the tragic situation in Leh and elsewhere, the phenomenon of cloud burst needs to be studied in detail so that the development of towns could be planned accordingly. The Japanese have after all learnt to cope with frequent earthquakes. The Central and state governments will have to make coordinated efforts to ensure an efficient management of our water resources so that the problems of excess and shortage are dealt with effectively. Instead of scoring brownie points over development versus the environment at international forums, the government should evolve an environment-friendly growth model with the involvement of all stakeholders.

Thought for the Day

Death and taxes and childbirth! There’s never any convenient time for any of them. — Margaret Mitchell

Corrections and clarifications

n In paragraph five of the front page anchor, “Sherdils to revive old rivalry” (September 17), the word ‘infamous’ has been wrongly used in place of ‘famous’.

n The word ‘in’ was redundant in the headline, “ Don’t slacken in war on terror: US to Pak army” (September 19, page 11).

n The report, “ All Pak-Eng Tests were fixed, claims bookie” (September 18, page 22), does not mention in the copy the statement attributed to the bookie.

n It should have been ‘is’ and not ‘are’ with land in the report , “ New mining Bill promises equity to affected locals” (September 18, page 1)

Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them.

This column appears twice a week — every Tuesday and Friday. We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error.

Readers in such cases can write to Mr Kamlendra Kanwar, Senior Associate Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the word “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is kanwar@tribunemail.com.

Raj Chengappa
Editor-in-Chief

ARTICLE

ISI behind stone-throwing
Time to change Kashmir strategy
by K. Subrahmanyam

Day after day Srinagar and many other towns in the Kashmir valley are placed under curfew. Groups of people defy curfew orders and indulge in stone-throwing, making sure to escalate it to a level to leave the Kashmir police with no alternative but to open fire after trying out teargas shells.

Inevitably, this results in a few deaths and some people getting injured. They understandably attract enormous attention in the national electronic and print media. Media people wax eloquent, to a great extent justifiably, on the sufferings of the common man, being denied access to hospitals, educational institutions, shopping facilities, etc. An impression is created that the government and the local police are responsible for people being subjected to such enormous hardship for weeks on end.

Opposition leader Mehbooba Mufti has called Omar Abdullah as “the most repressive” Chief Minister in the country. An eminent columnist and TV personality has raised a very justifiable question why National Conference legislators or, for that matter, separatists do not seem to have any control over the streets. What has not received adequate attention in the print and electronic media is that more than 1600 policemen, including senior police officers, have been wounded in the last three months. There are no estimates of the loss to the exchequer in terms of public property destroyed.

There appears to be a widespread assumption among various political leaders and most sections of our media that these sustained stone-throwing campaigns constitute outbursts of frustration and anger among the jobless youth of Kashmir. That assumption leads to the conclusion that there has been a governance deficit specific to Kashmir. The logical conclusion of this line of reasoning is to have an all-party delegation to go to Kashmir and ascertain the grievances of the youth. At the same time, separatists have made it crystal clear that the agitation is related to the demand for “azadi”. This situation calls for some sustained thinking instead of platitudinising. Unfortunately, that process does not seem to be evident either in the government or the media.

Let us assume that the curfew is lifted and the security forces are ordered to stay in their barracks. Will stone-throwing and public property destruction stop? No. The intensity of stone-throwing and the large number of policemen getting wounded, not adequately reported in our media, lead to the conclusion that stone-throwing is not an impulsive act but a planned one to compel the security forces to open fire and cause casualties.

If governance deficit brings young men in Kashmir to throw stones at the police, then in most states where governance is equally poor, young men should be throwing stones day after day. Thanks to the permissiveness of many of our politicians, we have enough stone-throwing in many parts of India but not the sustained stone-throwing of the Kashmir variety, which brings normal life to a halt for weeks. There is only one explanation why this happens in Kashmir and not in other states, where also there are angry and frustrated young men. The Kashmir campaign is being organised and directed by terrorist elements from outside.

A well-informed article in The Hindu brought out that when one person opened his shop ahead of the time prescribed by the separatists, he was beaten up and his shop was vandalised. That may be the valid explanation why legislators and other non-separatist leaders are inactive. That may even explain why people complain that the performance of the Kashmir police is below par and why they always ask the CRPF to open fire. Their families are hostages to terror. Sitting in Delhi and not having been to the spot for years, I have no tangible evidence to offer, but as a person with a background in intelligence analysis I cannot find an alternative explanation to the happenings in Kashmir

Surely, the stone-throwers know full well that their action will not remove their frustration, get them jobs or “azadi”. What they are aiming at is to escalate the situation when the Army will get involved, and they can go to town on the Indian Army’s atrocities, invoke Amnesty International, the UN Human Rights Commission and the UN General Assembly. It is timed to coincide with President Obama’s visit. For Pakistan’s ISI, the Kashmiri population is just cannon fodder and their normal modus operandi is to use suicide bombers to cause indiscriminate casualties of children, young men and women. That will explain why there are young men and children in the stone-pelting crowds. The ISI needs such casualties.

This is no Palestinian “intifada”, as some people make inapt comparisons. Palestinians do not destroy Palestinian property and prevent Palestinian children from getting milk or going to school. Palestinians do not throw stones at the Palestinian police.

How is this regime of terror operated? All it requires is some 39-40 trained dedicated jihadi terrorists introduced in each town as sleeper cells over the years with enough resources at their disposal. They get embedded in stone-throwing crowds and direct and manipulate their operations. They are in a position to use the separatists who are in a small minority but in sufficient numbers to provide such jihadis logistic and other backing. Their aim is not to get “azadi” or jobs for youngmen but to create chaos in the valley and rebut the Indian claim that constitutional democracy prevails in Kashmir under a government elected in a free and fair poll. Unfortunately, parochial politics in Kashmir becomes exploitable for those who want to denigrate constitutional democracy in Jammu and Kashmir

The strategy to deal with terrorism, imposed on Kashmir through a sizeable number of jihadis introduced as sleepers with the collaboration of local separatists and operating in an embedded manner among the stone-throwers, has to be different from the present one which depends on the Kashmir police out-enduring the jihadis, a kind of battle of attrition. This is a reactive strategy. What is called for is a proactive one which will identify the jihadi elements embedded in the stone-throwing crowds and neutralise them.

It is a pity that the responsibility for the sufferings of the Kashmiri people is not attributed to those who in reality inflict this enormous hardship — the stone-throwing embedded jihadis. Misperception about the entire phenomenon as a spontaneous expression of anger by youngsters has diverted attention from the underlying reality and the consequent appropriate strategy to deal with it. It is high time a thoroughly professional assessment was carried out to enable the formulation of an effective strategy.

MIDDLE

The ‘banditas’ are here!
by Raj Mehta

NOT fair, sir”, a smart young undergrad grumbles with good humour, in a break between classes. “Girls shouldn’t cover up like the Taliban on the roads. We can’t even guess what they look like when they flash past on their scootys and mopeds. “It’s pathetic!”

His friend disagrees: “They look awesome, man! Real cool with big black glares on. I can always make out how pretty they would be from their trendy clothes”.

The girls listen with great amusement. “Listen up, guys”, they chorus, all giggly and animated. “Covering up is far better than using dollops of anti UV SPF-30 sun block cream. All of us want Aishwarya’s peaches n’ milk complexion; otherwise you idiots won’t marry us!” One perky young lass looked up from doing up her nails to add with typical teenage candour: “Stops pesky boys from chasing you; whatever”, with a toss of her pretty head. The girls burst out in paroxysms of laughter. The young can be infectiously irreverent…

Indeed, masks add to the female mystique. In the West, the 1950s and the 1960s threw up masked characters that lived up to the ultimate feline fantasy in the form of Batwoman and Batgirl, the comicbook love interests of Batman and his companion, Robin. In fact, the depiction of the Barbara “Babs” Gordon incarnation of Batgirl as a career-oriented woman, coupled with her alter-ego as a crime fighter, was considered to be symbolic of women’s empowerment in the 1960s.

In India, the trend of young women using masks began in Pune, about a decade ago. Young girls in two wheelers started covering their faces almost completely, leaving just their eyes uncovered (protected by trendy shades anyway). This caught on and Chandigarh’s hep young ladies followed suit; the fashion enveloping the Tricity within no time. It is now a common sight across metropolitan India.

Whereas young lads used to open admiration of the gentler sex are taken askance, intrigued as well as amused by the girls covering themselves up in this manner, older people sometimes attribute darker motives to this trend. A recent article on the net gloomily (but amusingly) forecasts that if this remains unchecked and reaches the shores of France and Belgium, both already preoccupied with restrictions on the Hijab and Burqa, they may soon be flooded with ‘masked girls’ from India.

Some darkly wonder whether masked “Banditas” (female robbers) will be the next challenge for our overburdened cops. They are undoubtedly influenced by the Hollywood film Banditas, a wacky western comedy about two female bank robbers: Latina heartthrobs Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek. I am sure our cops are amused and look forward to this challenge!

Given the gross, suffocating pollution in our metros, the merciless sun and its debilitating effects on skin tone, on smart clothes and the genetic young need to be different, the Bandita trend is a practical, sensible way of coping with the effects of heat, grime and bleaching. Sense, however, demands that, whereas keeping hands encased in shoulder length gloves and wearing your brother’s discarded shirt over your smart tee is fine; wearing helmets (instead of dupatta masks) while breezing along on two wheelers to college or for a date is even better — and safer!

OPED ARCHITECTURE

"Gurgaon is a playground for builders and politicians"

Christopher Charles Benninger is busy doing in Bhutan what Le Corbusier did in the fifties in Punjab- creating a capital city. The much-acclaimed architect spoke to Nidheesh Tyagi on his work and town planning

Besides the new capital project, this Harvard and MIT trained American architect is just beginning to design the Premji University in Bangalore. Benninger made India his home some forty years back when he founded the School of Urban Planning at Ahmedabad with Balkrishna V Doshi (a member of Team Corbusier in India), followed by the Centre for Development Studies and Activities (CDSA) in Pune.

Richly acclaimed and awarded for his projects, which include prestigious projects like Suzlon One Earth Global Headquarters, IIM Kolkata and the Supreme Court of Bhutan. He has contributed to the urban planning of Thane and Kalyan in Maharashtra.

How differently do you visualise the Premji University ?

The Indian University campus has a rather problematic prototype, best seen in the IITs and in all large post-Independence campuses. These are all well spread-out over several hundred acres, resulting in very inefficient services-network and roads connecting all of these components.

Punjab and Haryana Secretariat, Chandigarh designed by Le Corbusier

The barriers on movement slows down and impairs the entire learning process. The planning is done much as a cantonment, or early twentieth century Garden City, with each function put in a zone: faculty housing divided into Professor, Assistant Professor, etc and students divided into boys and girls and undergraduate and graduate students and messes and " administrative block".

Christopher Charles Benninger

Even the faculties are divided into different blocks for different areas of study. Thus what we call a "university" is in fact the opposite! It is uniform into which a pluraform is divided up and separated. Nothing is integrated and unified. Even the staff has Class One to Four Housing Blocks.

The Premji University will be a "pluraform" where there is an integration of so called disciplines and faculties. Thus, the architecture will also be an expression of integration and holism! Everyone on the campus will be a "learner " and a "sharer" of knowledge, skills and sensitivities, even the drivers and the cooks and their children.

Thus, we are looking at a compact, walkable, cozy KNOWLEDGE CITY that is more based on functionality than trying to be a map of social status and segregation. The campus will be "walkable", it will integrate functions, it will be a pedestrian enclave with streets off which more intense activities occur and these will lead into quiet cul de sacs and gardens facilitating thought and contemplation.

Learning needs a balance between the wondering and the searching eye and the focused and directed eye! A good campus composition facilitates and catalyses thought; creates a yearning to learn and exposes everyone to key sensitivities and skills.

Your work has already been much acclaimed. So how do you see this particular project?

The Premji University is a cutting edge idea. It is the need of the country and the people involved are full of optimism and passion. Working as a part of this team and trying to give shape and spatial experiences that mirror and facilitate the core concept is a huge challenge.

As an architect and urban planner with a long journey behind me, this future exploration holds open many promises to make something useful and beautiful that will be remembered, and I dare say mimicked in the coming decades and over the next century. Any senior architect would see this as the ultimate project! It is the place to pull together a life’s work, one’s ideals and one’s love of humanity and turn that into stone and mortar.

How do you see Chandigarh? How has it developed from the way Le Corbusier made it?

Le Corbusier and his team created "a framework" for urban life to evolve. It was never meant as a straight jacket like a perfect sculpture or a painting. It is a living, growing and morphing "machine for living" as Corb would have put it.

Looking at the way other cities in India have been going, Chandigarh is an amazing example of good administration and considered development. Now that its population is rapidly expanding, the challenge will be to find new patterns and structures that address the future, yet capture and maintain the beauty of Chandigarh. It is difficult to make something beautiful and very easy to destroy it. I would say Chandigarh is one of the most beautiful and livable cities I have seen.

As part of the team preparing Chandigarh’s master plan, how are you helping in furthering the city’s growth? In what way is it philosophically different from or similar to Corbusier’s own ideas ?

There is a committee focused on this task and I am just one humble member of this august committee. The committee is primarily addressing immediate issues that confront the people of Chandigarh and trying to resolve them within the Le Corbusier plan and spirit.

There are matters that may seem trivial, like signage and hoardings, but they could destroy the city if not considered in a very clear manner. There are profound and structural decisions that are being made that will stand the city well in the future.

An example is to ensure that the proposed Metro for Chandigarh is underground ! This will avoid the destruction of the city with humongous overhead bridges crashing through the Garden City. The same philosophy is being applied to parking lots that are needed but must go underground, using the tops for parks in the cores of shopping areas.

Likewise the committee is against "fly-overs" and other plagues that are destroying the urban cityscape in the country. These are new elements introduced to the old plan. But they are being thought of in a sensible and rational manner. That is what good planning is all about.

Do you notice deviations in the way the city and its executive handled its design?

Every plan has its counter intuitive results. The mere beauty of the city attracts investments from NRIs, IT Parks and a host of other unexpected outcomes. The population has long passed the ceiling proposed by Le Corbusier and there are other cities right on the edge of Chandigarh. In fact all of these are one city!

It will take administrative imagination not to see Chandigarh as an island and to see it as the core of an urban region. The real challenge is to plan for that region!

Seeing it just as a machine for living and a functional model, why do you think this was not replicated in other parts of India?

Chandigarh has profoundly influenced the planning of Gandhinagar and the CIDCO plans for New Mumbai. Then each of these manifestations has its own political life and its own social-economic reality. Chandigarh is a Union Territory. That has protected it from the ravages of vested interests that stalk our cities. CIDCO is on a more massive scale and falls in a state where the past four Chief Ministers have been "builders". Conviviality and "the good life" are not really the bottom line for builders and the mixture of politics and city making has never proven very constructive in working for the public good`85even in a democracy.

You are yourself making a city in Bhutan now. How is it shaping up? How do you balance your global insights to the local microcosmic realities?

The new capital city of Thimphu is a Structure Plan laid over an existing cluster of settlements in a fragile Himalayan valley. The approach is " organic" as opposed to "geometric" which we see in Chandigarh. So the plan grew out of the Wang Chu Valley’s ecology and its form. We adapted the plan to the context, rather than the other way around. We had a wealth of heritage structures also and a Buddhist society with its own sense of community and spirituality. The plan is a response to all of these things, not an abstract intellectual idea imposed on a flat slate!

How do you see the Indian urban scene changing ? We see fast urbanisation, very chaotic town planning and slums mushrooming everywhere...

As the national economic base shifts from agriculture and raw materials to industry and services, the configuration of the people who carry out those functions will dramatically change over the next four or five decades. Growth is inevitable. We really have no urban planning in most states. The so-called planners are just following the procedures laid out in the legislation. There is no creative thinking or "design". There are just administrative rules and procedures.

This will impact on even Chandigarh negatively if the matter is not considered at the highest level. For example slums: the town planners in our country did not even show slums on their plans until a decade ago. They were illegal and so in the minds of administrators, they did not exist.

It took a sea change of thinking to admit that poor people are essential to run our cities and even the government. We had a City Commissioner of Mumbai who tried to physically evict slum dwellers and to his surprise he found out that 76% of his municipal employees lived in slums. Slums are now the real cities of India. This is where either our success or our failure lies. Most of our urban thinking is focused on middle class dreams and expectations. We have to create a better dream!

Are there any good models of solving this imbalance?

A good start would be to look at processes instead of physical templates! The principles of intelligent urbanism lay out a common charter of values that could under pin the process of planning. These are the planning axioms I developed in the Thimphu planning process and they are gaining acceptance slowly but surely around the world.

What is your take on cities like Pune and Gurgaon shaping the new urban metaphor of India?

These are not really cities in the sense of planned urban settlements anymore. These are playgrounds for builders and politicians to generate huge fortunes. That is the reality of these urban fabrics. They are not built for the people who inhabit them but for the people who build them.